Data Science Speed Dating in Berlin in 2017

We’ve been running various kinds of data science themed events with non-profits since DSSG Berlin was set up back in 2015. Towards the end of last year, we tried out a new kind of event, which we’re calling Data Science Speed Dating, and it seemed to work out well. Read on find out more, how it works, and how to sign up for the next one.

Data Science Speed Dating? What’s the big idea?

In short, we want to make it easy for non profit organisations to speak to volunteer data scientists so they can help them think through data problems as early as possible.

Share the problem

So, rather than waiting until we have all the data, and a really well defined brief, each non-profit organisation had a chance to present their problem for 5 minutes, to a room of volunteer data scientists.

Think through it together

Next, each non-profit organisation was paired with a table of data scientists, and had 10 minutes to explore the problem together, completing a worksheet with prompts, to talk about:

• common problems that they have come across on previous projects
• metrics to track so the non-profit can see if they’re making progress
• what kind of resources this project would need, so they know early if they need to rethink the scope

The speed dating part

After 10 minutes was up, we introduced the speed dating part — we rotated the groups, matching the data scientist volunteers to a new non-profit, and repeated the process, until all the volunteers had spoke to all the non-profits.

By the end of the night, people from the non profits had a chance to think through their problem with nearly 25–30 skilled data professionals, leaving the event with a load of useful, structured feedback about the next steps they should take.

If any volunteers or nonprofits get on particularly well together, the worksheets allowed a chance for data scientists to opt-in for a single follow up coffee to discuss in more detail.

Okay, but why would you need this?

Many non profits we speak to don’t have the expertise or skills in-house to prepare a really well-defined data problem by themselves, nor do they have the data collated in a way data scientists can work on straight away. So, before data scientists can do any actual analysis, it ends up taking a lot of volunteer time to help collate data, clean it up, and work out how to explain the problem to others, before its possible to have an event like a hackday or similar where you might try solving the problem. This limits how many non-profits we can help.

In many cases, what’s more useful is for someone proficient at working with data to help people from the non-profit organisation think about the problem at the beginning — so they know what kind of data they need to collect, how they need to store it, so and what can realistically be done with data in the first place.

You don’t need a long data science project to help people in an non-profit organisation to think about this — you just need timely access to right person, early.

Alright that sounds kinda neat. You doing stuff like this again?

Yes! And you can totally get involved!

We have a big hackathon event planned later in spring, but in the meantime, we’re running another Data Science Speed Dating event again on March 22nd, you can sign up here.

If this sounds interesting to you, sign up to our mailing list to find out when and where future ones will be happening, or follow us on twitter at dssgber.

Anything else?

We’re also trying out running office hours with Impact Hub Berlin, to lower the barrier of entry for getting help.

If you work in a non-profit organisation, you’re in Berlin, and you’re looking for some advice thinking through a data problem, you can book a slot to talk with us, for free, on March 6th.

Book a slot during our office hours session

If you can’t make it in March

We’re testing these office hours out, so we only have a few slots available this time, but we’ll be doing this every month through 2018, so it you missed the chance this time, we’ll have another one in in the first week of every month through 2018.

Once we have the format sorted, we’ll be increasing the numbers of volunteers around to help run these office hours, so we can help more non-profits each month.

Onward!

Huge thanks to Tory Dykes for taking all the photos on the event and the lovely people at co.up in Berlin for providing the space to run the event.